Category: History – Page 4
Wrong Way Corrigan mistakes Ireland for California
The story of how Douglas Corrigan ended up in Ireland while aiming for California is one of my favourites. In fact, I feel sure that I’ve written about him before*. It was seventy-eight years ago, the 17th of July in 1938, when Douglas Corrigan earned the nickname “Wrong Way Corrigan”. He started his aviation career…
Read more… 22 Jul 16
The first supersonic jet bomber
This week, I am away camping in rainy North Wales. However, my friend Tatiana works for Picryl (https://picryl.com), a cross-platform application to find traces of history in photos, rare and ancient books, photos, posters and postcards in hundreds of sources like Library of Congress, the Internet Archive, and NASA. Tatiana is an aviation geek too…
Read more… 24 Jun 16
Another Unsolved Mystery: The Kinross Incident
The Kinross Incident is a famous aviation accident which many still believe shows proof of an extraterrestrial encounter. The story unfolds in late November in 1953 over the Great Lakes. The Air Defense Command was activated in 1946 to offer air warning and air defence for the continental United States. The plan was to extend…
Read more… 3 Jun 16
The Mysterious Disappearance of Foxtrot 94
This is one of my favourite aviation mysteries, in which a military pilot is reported as chasing after an unidentified object in the sky which he describes as glowing in a golden light before disappearing completely. His aircraft was found at the bottom of the lake, with the canopy shut and no trace of the…
Read more… 1 Apr 16
The Mystery of the Hawaii Clipper
Pan American Airways was founded in 1927 to offer air mail services as a response to German-owned Colombian carrier SCADTA who was moving north from Colombia and lobbying hard for landing rights in the Panama Canal Zone. The US government approved Pan Am’s mail delivery contract and protected it from US competitors, glad that SCADTA…
Read more… 26 Feb 16
Aircraft Lost to the Bermuda Triangle: Airborne Transport (1948)
As aviation and maritime safety has increased, one doesn’t hear so much about the Bermuda Triangle so much anymore. Known as the “Devil’s Triangle”, it wasn’t so long ago that it was considered the biggest mystery of the time. The first reference to this mysterious and dangerous area which appeared to be swallowing ships and…
Read more… 15 Jan 16
Accident Reports
In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380
On the 17th of April in 2018, Southwest Airlines flight 1330 experienced an engine failure while climbing to cruise altitude. The aircraft was a Boeing 737-7H4 (registration N772SW) with two…
Going Around: Bulgaria Air Charter flight 8115
It was 4am on the 16th of July 2018 when the Bulgaria Air Charter flight crew arrived at the airport, an hour before the scheduled 05:12 flight 8115 from Catania…
Demystifying
How do you pronounce…?
This is a very interesting article by Allen Amsbaugh which was originally published in NASA’s ASRS Directline about the issues of navigational fixes which sound or look similar. The ASRS…
Flightradar 24 and aircraft tracking
Flightradar24 (FR24) is a global flight tracking site which offers realtime information about flights by tracking ADS-B. ADS-B stands for automatic dependent surveillance-broadcast. This is a means for an aircraft…
History
How to shoot down a fighter jet...while flying it.
The Grumman F-11 Tiger was a popular US Navy fighter aircraft introduced in 1956. At the time, it was known as the F11F Tiger. Grumman had been working to modernise…
The Real “Bionic Man”
Some of you may have spotted the recent comments on Wingless Flight in the M2-F1 by aerospace journalist and author Nigel Macknight, who had written about NASA’s M2-F2 pilot Milt…
Fun Stuff
Microsoft Flight Simulator: The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Microsoft Flight Simulator has released a new version, Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020, fourteen years after the release of Microsoft Flight Simulator X. The timing couldn’t be better, of course, with…
Toddler Overboard and other aviation videos
I’ve got quite a collection of interesting videos building up so it’s past time for me to share them! These are not all brand new but new to me and…
@FearofLanding
Mendel on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380From the final report: "For example, according to CVR information, during the 17 minutes between the time of the engine…
Rudy Jakma on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380That makes sense Chip. It also would confirm your observation that the aircraft was not severely damaged, otherwise an engine…
Harrow on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380The details of a flight plan often do not survive even the closing of the boarding gate, much less any…
CHip on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380The Wikipedia article says The aircraft, N772SW, a Boeing 737-7H4 was subsequently flown to Boeing in Everett, WA on April…
R Waskin on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380Re fuel and souls on board, isn't that information contained in the flight plan? I'm a private pilot, not commercial,…
Jon on In the cockpit of Southwest flight 1380Hear Hear! It is what they are trained to do, and they did very well. You hear often about how…